Q & A III

An artistic rendition of Brenocide

Every day now, it seems, I witness many a young budding metalhead, hailing from all across various parts of the globe, requesting that I grace him or her with the glory of my infinite wisdom...

"Brenocide, I ate a Snickers bar, is that metal? Brenocide, what do you think of post blackened gore grind death industrial groove slam core? Brenocide, are shoelaces metal? Brenocide, what do you think about a subject you already talked about but I never bothered to look into before asking about? Brenocide..." 

Unlike the God your parent's begged you to worship before me in vain, your prayers have not fallen upon deaf, non-existent ears. I have bore witness to every single one of your inquiries, and the ones deemed worthy of my insight shall be remedied for you within this post. Prepare to be enlightened by unparalleled true metal knowledge like that of which the world has never before seen! (Unless of course you consider my other Q&A's.) Let the teachings in brutality commence!




How unmetal are hair straighteners on a scale from a 1-10?
- Wesley Allen

A thousand. 

What's your view on industrials / rivetheads / dark waves showing up to a metal concert? (Just to clarify, this does not include cybergoths, how I hate those people.)

- Tobias Lafontaine

Well, thank you for clarifying... To be perfectly frank with you Tobias: show me a person who classifies his or herself as a "dark wave", and I'll show you a person who hasn't gotten their daily recommended dose of punches to the face. You goth kids have all sorts of different labels for one another? What's the difference? As far as I knew, there were two kinds of goth kids: the poseur mall goth Hot Topic fake wannabe goth kids, and then the true goths who buy all their bondage pants... I don't know... somewhere else. You'll have to forgive me if I'm a bit ignorant in regards to the different sub-genres of rave party goth cliques. I never knew there was a difference between a "rivethead" and a "cybergoth". As far as I knew, cybergoths were defined by their freaky hairstyles, wearing of gas masks, and big goggles. Yet when I looked up "rivethead" in Google image search, the above photograph is what came up. How do you expect me to take that? 

Not to give you any (more) grief about your musical taste or choice of style, but you say you show up to metal shows looking like this? Dude, I'm all about you expressing your originality or whatever, but you got my back to a wall on this one. I can't tell you that's a good idea. Before you asked me the above question, you said "I wouldn't want to be a poseur just to fit in", because you "prefer the industrial fashion" over the "metal fashion". So when you go to a goth club looking like this, along with everybody else, what does that make you? If you were worried about looking like a poseur, then you would go to the goth club without this stuff on. That's obviously not the case. I imagine you want that goth chick poon as much as the next "dark wave" or whatever, and this is how you're gonna have to look to get some. That's all good, it's expected of you in that situation. I don't see why it's unreasonable to expect you to just take your goth image to the goth place and the metal image to the metal place. They're just clothes and accessories dude. If you're getting a hard time for wearing them, then don't. Metalheads are pretty brutish, I don't know if I would personally give you a hard time outright, but once you step in that pit man, all bets are off. I mean, you can do it if you want, but I wouldn't suggest dressing like that if you want to feel a whole lot less sore in the morning. Or maybe you're a masochist? They gotta call them "bondage" pants for a reason...

Are there any downsides to being a metalhead?
- Greg Phillips


Of course there are, Greg. I mean, true metal status wouldn't be so glorious if it also wasn't so difficult to achieve. First and foremost, it's impossible to enjoy myself when any other type of music is playing around me. FM radio is simply a nightmare. Regardless of whatever channel I land on, I will be consistently miserable. If I don't have my MP3 player on me, it's like I'm walking around in a living hell. Everyone just seems to love terrible music. They play it in the stores, in the restaurants, in the bars, etc. Does anybody actually like Counting Crows anymore? I can't even escape it at my job. My supervisor at work puts on Pandora and listens to mid-90's R&B all god damn day. Believe me, I wish I could find something to like about other types of music, so I didn't feel so compelled to jab the closest pointed object square into my eardrum. I can't help it, the metal is just too epic. Nothing else compares or pleases me. It's like imagine if you made it with Angela Gossow from Arch Enemy, or Alissa White-Gluz from The Agonist. No other woman would be good enough. You couldn't settle for less. Such is my relationship with metal. (Alissa, please call me.)


Where do your preferences lie in terms of Old School vs Modern Death Metal? I'm finding in my local scene and in terms of touring bands that more modern styles like Brutal/Technical Death Metal totally dominate lineups. I'd like to see more Swedeath or Death/Doom acts touring near me as I find that type of thing much more conductive to headbanging/moshing than the blastbeat fests that make up the majority of local gigs. 
- Craig Molyneux 

I wish I had a solid preference between the two for you Craig, but I think that both sides have a lot to offer musically depending on what you're listening to. Sure, I'm a close-minded prick outside the realm of metal, but within its beautiful confines there is plenty of room for grey areas and discussion. I mean, I'm always going to love the likes of Death and Obituary. I'm a long time representer of the old school, and this is certainly no exception. The pioneers of a sound will always garner most of the respect out of me, simply due to their very status as pioneers. However, it's simply not an option for me to deny the greatness of the more modern technical acts, such as Arsis and Obscura. These are some of my favorite bands, and they use their technical prowess to make progressive, melodic, awesome music. I can't really tell you outright that I prefer one over the other, but that I just love them both.

Not to say that there aren't bands that take the whole technical death metal concept way too far. Case in point, for me anyway, is Brain Drill. Sweep-arpeggios on the electric guitar are the lullaby to the sweet musical dreams of every metal fan, but that band just takes it too far. You can't comprise an entire metal riff out of the same arpeggio really fast over and over again without expecting it to sound like anything except a lot of noise. If I type a bunch of garbled characters and nonsense with my keyboard at immense speeds, would you call me a good writer? I didn't think so. You can be the fastest fingered guitarist on the planet, practicing your craft for years and years, but if the progression of your notes don't make any musical sense, then you still suck. TNM reader Johan Mattews requested I do a more in depth rant about bands of that nature, and I certainly plan to. So stay tuned.

Who's your favorite metal band? My guess is Manowar because of all the references in your blog.
- Taylor Schnell

Sorry Taylor, you guessed wrong. While I do very much love listening to Manowar, and won't deny their status as the truest heavy metal band in existence, they're hardly my top favorite band. In fact, (and this answer is really going to suck,) I don't truly have a one favorite band. I don't think anybody with a proper working temporal lobe should. It would be impossible to choose. There is just too much musical versatility from genre to sub genre to pick only one of those bands out of the mix. Plus there's a variety of external factors to what music I like listening to at any given moment. My mood, what time of day it is, the weather, whose company I'm in, etc. I might have a favorite band from one moment to the next, but that changes on an hourly basis, and if I told you who they were now, I'd be editing this blog post until the end of time.

However, I'm not one to let you go completely empty-handed in regards to some info about my musical preferences. It seems like I'm discussing and posting about death and black metal bands most of the time, considering the extreme metal subgenres are the most popular among the community these days. What some of you might not actually know, is that Brenocide is quite a power metal buff. While I enjoy listening to all types of metal genres, power metal has always held a particularly special place in my heart, and I do in fact, most certainly have a favorite power metal band:

While I love listening to a variety of many different power metal acts, glory day German speed metallers, Blind Guardian are just unparalleled in their creation of melodic, beautiful, emotional masterpieces. Hansi Kursch has one of, if not the greatest voice in the genre. Andre Olbrich has been ruining faces with his medieval-inspired solos and riffage with that same candy-red ESP guitar for years. I love this band like I love my own family. They've been somewhere on my playlist since my inception into the fires of true heavy metal, and that's not going to change any time soon. If you want to take a break from the growls, grunts, screams and face-crushing down-tuned musical armageddon that so many of you have grown accustomed to; and just want to enjoy, some fast, melodic, beautiful metal, than Blind Guardian is a must. Even their worst album, A Twist in the Myth had its share of memorable tracks, and it was more than made up for with their latest release, At The Edge of Time. If you haven't heard it already, stop listening to this loser rant and go fill your ears with the epic wizardry of Guardian's classic works. I strongly suggest their 90's era material within the albums Somewhere Far Beyond, Imaginations from the Other Side, and most definitely Nightfall in Middle-Earth.

That's all for this round of Q&A. Want to have your questions featured next time on TNM? Like the Facebook Page and head over to Discussions! Thanks to all the readers that contributed, now go forth and be metal!


Brenocide \,,/